This chapter describes the use of visual attention characteristics as a biometric for authentication or identification of individual viewers. The visual attention characteristics of a person can be easily monitored by tracking the gaze of a viewer during the presentation of a known or unknown visual scene. The positions and sequences of gaze locations during viewing may be determined by overt (conscious) or covert (subconscious) viewing behaviour. Methods to quantify the spatial and temporal patterns established by the viewer for both overt and covert behaviours are proposed. The former behaviour entails a simple PIN-like approach to develop an independent signature while the latter behaviour is captured through three proposed techniques: a principal component analysis technique (‘eigenGaze’); a linear discriminant analysis technique; and a fusion of distance measures. Experimental results suggest that both types of gaze behaviours can provide simple and effective biometrics for this application.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.